This is HER furniture next (and look, that bookshelf is the perfect shape to be used as a barricade, excellent), so she's going to volunteer to help handle it. She also wants to go in the group going to the bathroom, she hasn't done that yet and her internal clock is really confused about what time it is (it's, like, six AM in Missouri right now, right?) and she's not sure she's going to be able to sleep through the night, so going to the bathroom is probably a good thing to get out of the way.

If they're doing polishing first then she can help Vernon with polishing; she has splash goggles but no gloves, do they have a second set of gloves for this? Or she can help Lysander hold stuff while he's assembling the desk, if he looks like he might need help and can tell her how to help him. Really she's enormously willing to do whatever it takes to make sure she doesn't look useless, although she really is going to need gloves if they want two people handling acid.

Lysander has taken Karen's suggested Spaceship Control Panel aesthetic and turned it into a series of somewhat baffling instructions like "hold this in this exact spot, don't move" and "stand on that while I hit it with a hammer." He doesn't super care which of the stack of minions actually does these things, he just wants the art project to succeed (and maybe lay claim to the stray metal scraps at the end, if it is successful enough?) 

Vernon thinks that actually she can do installation of the wall desk and shelves while he gets started on polishing, which involves much less acid. Julia seems to want them attached directly to the wall? And this will take some assembly and measuring to get right. And he's got the gloves, goggles, and some of the spare clothes that looked the least salvagable, as rug and a makeshift mask. Since acid fumes are probably not the healthiest. Actually, anyone staying inside the room while he's polishing should probably have some kind of facemask on, this is basic alchemy safety.

Does he know how to polish a surface to a chrome finish with acid and a lot of nerve? Not really! Is he going to try anyway? Obviously! Careful scrubbing circular motions, let's get this to an almost-mirror finish!

Julia aids in this project by being utterly, unshakeably certain it'll work. That's an important component of interior decorating in the enclave, too, though not as intensely as in the Scholomance. She declares every few minutes that she can see some improvement already, that she thinks it's going to come out the exact right shine, she points this out to everyone else, she has them look at the sketches, she occasionally pushes a little mana into making the wall look just right, not as a permanent thing, just as a nudge to get it where it's going...

It takes a lot of scrubbing circular motions, and he is going to be sore tomorrow, but! The wall steadily becomes shinier. In small, small sections. He gets faster as he gets the hang of it, thankfully, but this will still take a while. And he hopes that someone is, uh, watching out for mals while he's doing this, because wow is he vulnerable.

Julian deposits Wen Ning in his room and is about to head back when he notices some sort of party going on next door. 

It'd be hard to miss! There's about a dozen of them, mostly in the hallway with the door open for ventilation, assembling some stuff out of metal. At the center is a blonde girl wearing a full face of makeup, in expensive ultralight enchanted clothing that's also tailored very fashionably, loose enough on her to leave room to grow without looking like that's the only thing the fit was optimized for. She is doing yoga on a Tibetan prayer rug and periodically yelling encouragement to the students working inside on polishing the walls.

Is he going to finish up this long, exhausting day of sucking up to enclavers by sucking up to more enclavers? Yes, yes he is. 

"Do you guys need any help?" 

Lissa' brought a few sketches, including one of a shelf with trapezoid-shaped ledges, though she'll defer to whoever was here first about exact aesthetics. She's also got a lot of ideas for light arrangements, mostly based on existing constellations.

She's quite happy to listen to Lysander and help hold things in place with her scrawny girl arms the best she can, as well.

New Asian kid!  Unless she met him previously, she's not great at telling Asians apart. "Oh, hi! Sure, we might, what can you do? Biggest thing that would be useful is ventilation, also useful would be lemonade, or seltzer, or design ideas if you've got those -" she gestures over at the people on the design team, an innocent-looking girl in street clothes with a sketchbook and a thin, striking kid with a lot of piercings. "We're going for a Buddhist spaceship aesthetic. Chrome and, you know, Buddhism."

"I'm Julian Chan. I guess I'm, uh, technically Buddhist? My family are like lazy Buddhists. We're from Hong Kong, so, certain level of ambient Buddhism. Maybe I could advise?" 

It looks like they could really use some protective gloves, and he has a pair in his pack, but he's waiting to offer until it's clearer he might get something out of this. 

(Thin, striking kid is great at holding things for hammering and venturing the occasional opinion on metal etching.

Hey, it’s — apparently — a living.

He’ll take over some polishing in shifts, too, if Vernon’ll let him. And pocket the occasional bit of scrap.)

"Great, perfect!! Do you have ideas on wall art, I don't have much on the wall art front now. I was thinking something that looked like a window on a space station, but something sort of Buddhist-themed on the other side - if there are meaningful constellations or if the Earth at a particular orientation is auspicious -"

(His other talent is not rolling his eyes.)

"In my experience Buddhist interior decorating mostly involves a lot of gold. Just like really vast amounts of gold. And portraits of Buddhas and lotus flowers and things? I'm okay at calligraphy, I could paint some precepts or something." 

"Sure, that'd be great! I just want my rug to feel at home." She kisses it. 

"Great! Happy to help." Okay is definitely stretching Julian's calligraphy skills but he can sure write in traditional Chinese and this girl won't know the difference. "I don't think I got your name? Or your enclave?" 

"Julia. New York."

Oh okay that explains everything. 

"Cool! I haven't decided between creative writing and artificing yet." 

A pale girl in undyed silk approaches from the other end of the hall, accompanied by her matchingly-dressed brother, just in time to see this kiss. They pause for a fraction of a second before proceeding. 

"Hi, uh, we were told somebody" from New York "wanted to buy slippers?" the girl says as soon as this wouldn't constitute interrupting. 

"I could probably do a portrait of Buddha if you don't mind it being sketchbook-sized?" pipes up Lissa after Julian and Julia finish up their part of the conversation.

Julia's life is amazing. "Yes please!" she says to the portrait of Buddha. "I DO want slippers," she says to the slipper sellers. "Silk, just like Rebecca's. What are you offering them for?"

She holds up the slippers. "Silk is what we have! These are all we've got until the spiders start producing in earnest, we don't have a particular advantage at acquiring non-silk fibers. If you wanted them dyed you'd need to get us dye and wait a little while, but they're perfectly comfy as-is. What do you have to trade?"

Gosh look at all these people helping with the project! It is technically not his project, really, but he is so pleased anyway.

You there, put your hand right there so we can make sure this line is straight - oh, this one is surprisingly good at standing perfectly still, good job, Z, you get a sympathetic shoulder nudge that says yep, Totally Not Rolling Our Eyes, Amirite, - oh, design ideas!! Lysander loves design ideas, he is the implementation guy, he will totally inhale Lissa's design ideas to make Karen's vague trapezoids concept cooler - hammer hammer, "you're doing such a good job, you're my favorite, I love you," he murmurs to his tool as it punches perfect neat nail-holes. 

This'll be worth it just for the mana and the time spent doing Real Work (TM) with the weapon he's hoping to keep functional for four years. Vernon and Karen both have preexisting claims on other benefits from this several hours of work, so he's letting Z and Lissa get most of the scraps. 

"Hi Lucy!" calls Rebecca, from where she is polishing the walls and refining her sense of how much mana she has.